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Switzerland: Historical
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| Early Civilization |
| Around 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last major Ice Age, hunter- fisher folk moved in to occupy the west-central heartland – or Mittelland – of the country, soon afterwards building permanent villages on piles on the shores of the lakes of Zurich, Neuchatel, Geneva. During the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, the settled villagers began both to make contact with neighbouring populated regions, and to make war on them. In the first millennium BC, the Celts advanced into Switzerland from the west, bringing with them a new culture and new sophistication, as exemplified in the fortified Celtic township discovered at La Tène, near Neuchatel, and others near Basel, Bern and Zurich. |
| The Romans |
| In 58 BC a Roman army under Julius Caesar defeated the Helvetii – a group of Celtic tribes resident in the fertile area between the Alps and the Jura mountains – and forced them to move en masse to the northern part of Switzerland to serve as an irregular frontier force. Over the next hundred years, the Romans gradually opened up the country, building the first roads over the major Alpine passes (the Grand-St-Bernard, as well as the Julier and Splügen) and founding provincial towns at Nyon, Augst near Basel, and Avenches, the last of which became the Roman capital, with more than fifty thousand inhabitants in its heyday. For two centuries or more under the Romans, Switzerland enjoyed peace and prosperity, with towns established at Geneva, Lausanne, Baden, Zurich, Chur and others. Agriculture flourished, and the region's settlements were populated by a cultural mix of native Celts and settled Roman officials. The peace was shattered in 260, when the Alemanii – a group of Germanic tribes from the area of modern Germany – broke through the Romans' fortified northern border and pushed southwards. |
| The Roots of Freedom (400 - 1516) |
| Around 400, Rome withdrew its legions from the area of Switzerland, and Germanic tribes moved in to take control. In the western regions, the originally Germanic Burgundians settled and adopted both the Christianity and the Latin language of the local Gallo-Roman tribes. On the south side of the mountains, and in the closed Alpine valleys peoples retained close cultural links with their former Roman overlords. Elsewhere, Aleman tribes slowly trickled down from the north into the less hospitable thick forests of the central and north-eastern parts of Helvetia to build new villages and agricultural settlements, generally doing so without displacing previous inhabitants and halting their advances at points where the land was already populated by Burgundians. Unlike their Latin-speaking neighbours, the Germanic Alemans had little contact with Rome and Christianity, and so continued to use their own native language and follow their own customs. Around 600, both the Alemans and the Burgundians were conquered by the Franks, who absorbed them into their empire. The Frankish Empire greatly expanded Latin Christianity throughout Switzerland – and especially into the pagan Alemanic areas – with a network of monasteries spreading into the countryside. Feudalism also spread, and the once-great Roman towns fell into decline as local warrior nobles took control over an agrarian society of lords, vassals and a vast, impoverished peasantry. In 870, the empire was split, with the dividing line running right through the middle of modern Switzerland. Chaos and conflict erupted, and it wasn’t until around 1050 that peace and order returned to the region, nominally under the control of the Holy Roman Empire. |
| Decentralization, Consultation and Cooperation |
| Decentralization, consultation and cooperation are still key Swiss attributes, as they were in 1291 at the start of the country's history, when a group of mountain farmers decided to band together to defy their foreign occupiers. Part: 1 2 |
Switzerland-4You: be Swiss-Happy! |
| The Swiss Flag: Freedom, Honour and Fidelity |
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